Synopses & Reviews
Focusing on U.S. property rights law and the notions of private property and the Rule of Law, this book paints an unconventional picture of law and rights in general. Law and rights shift and cycle as systematic factors like increasing numbers and complexity produce tough institutional choices and unexpected combinations of goals and institutions, such as private property best protected by the unconstrained political process and communitarian values best achieved through exit and atomistic markets. These forces also frustrate attempts to export the U.S. image of rights. Although there may be an important role for law, rights and courts both in the U.S. and abroad, it can not be easily defined. This book proposes a way to define that role and to change the way we look at law.
Review
"Using the context of supply and demand, Komesar affers an analysis of rights in general and property rights in particular in the demand for and supply of the limited resources of law and the courts....For readers interested in a more provocative approach to understanding the nexus between law and society, this book will prove illuminating. Graduate level and above." Choice
Synopsis
Focusing on the interaction of law-making, law-interpreting, and law-enforcing institutions as these bear on US property rights law and debates about private property and the rule of law, Komesar paints an unconventional picture of law, rights shifting and cycling as systemic factors.
Synopsis
What law is, can be or ought to be is determined by the character of those institutions that make, interpret and enforce law. The interaction of these institutions molds the supply of and demand for law. Focusing on this interaction in the context of US property rights law and the debates about private property and the rule of law, this book paints an unconventional picture of law and rights shifting and cycling as systemic factors, such as increasing numbers and complexity, strain both supply and demand. Although there may be an important role for law, rights and courts both in the US and abroad, it can not be facilely defined. This book proposes a way to define that role and to reform legal education and legal analysis.
Table of Contents
Part I: 1. Supply and demand; 2. The spectrum of rights; 3. The supply side - the little engine of law and rights; Part II. Land Use and the Political Process - Property Rights and Public Law: 4. Zoning and its discontents - political malfunction and the demand for rights; 5. Just compensation - the problems of pricing; 6. High stakes players and hidden markets; Part III. The Role of Law: 7. Theories of property: from Coase to communitarianism; 8. Numbers, complexity and the rule of law; 9. Law's laws.